Thursday, 14 July 2016

Green Party responds to Lords Committee report 'Building More Homes'

I thought readers would be interested in this release from the House of Lords Economic Affairs Committee and the Green Party's response

In their report, Building More Homes, published today LINK, the cross-party House of
Lords Economic Affairs Committee criticises the Government’s housing policy
for:

· Setting a new homes
target which will fail to meet the demand for new homes or moderate the rate of
house price increases.

· Restricting local
authorities’ access to funding to build more social housing.

· Creating uncertainty in
the already dysfunctional housing market by frequent changes to tax rules and
subsidies for house purchases, reductions in social rents, and the extension of
the Right to Buy. All of these changes reduce the supply of homes for those who
need low cost rental accommodation.

· A narrow focus on home
ownership which neglects those who rent their home.

· Restraints on local
authority borrowing should be lifted. Local authorities should be free to
borrow to fund social housebuilding as they are other building programmes. This
would enable local authorities to resume their historic role as one of the
major builders of new homes, particularly social housing.

The current historically low cost of borrowing means local authorities could
make a large contribution to building the houses we need for the future.
Further, the new Prime Minister has announced that the Government will abandon
their fiscal target. This paves the way to increase local authority borrowing
powers.

· Council tax should be
charged on development that is not completed quickly. The Government’s reliance
on private developers to meet its target of new homes is misguided. The private
sector housebuilding market is oligopolistic with the eight largest builders
building 50% of new homes. Their business model is to restrict the volume of
housebuilding to maximise their profit margin. To address this the Committee
recommend that local authorities are granted the power to levy council tax on
developments that are not completed within a set time period.

· Maximise the use of
public land. The Government must take decisive steps to build on the very
substantial holdings of surplus publicly owned land. The Committee recommends
that a senior Cabinet minister must be given overall responsibility for
identifying and coordinating the release of public land for housing, with a
particular focus on providing low cost homes. The National Infrastructure
Commission should oversee this process.

· Local authorities should
be given the power to increase planning fees. Local authorities should be able
to set and vary planning fees to help fund a more efficient planning system and
the upper cap on these charges should be much higher than the current limit.

Commenting Lord Hollick, Chairman of the Committee, said:

We are facing an acute housing crisis with home ownership – and increasingly
renting – being simply unaffordable for a great many people.

”The only way to address this is to increase supply. The country needs to build
300,000 homes a year for the foreseeable future. The private sector alone
cannot deliver that. It has neither the ability nor motivation to do so. We
need local government and housing associations to get back into the business of
building.

Local authorities are keen to meet this challenge but they do not have the
funds or the ability to borrow to embark on a major programme to build new
social homes. It makes no sense that a local authority is free to borrow to
build a swimming pool but cannot do the same to build homes.

The Government are too focussed on home ownership which will never be
achievable for a great many people and in some areas it will be out of reach
even for those on average incomes. Government policy to tackle the crisis must
be broadened out to help people who would benefit from good quality, secure
rented homes. It is very concerning that changes to stamp duty for landlords
and cuts to social rent could reduce the availability of homes for rent. The
long term trend away from subsidising tenancies to subsidising home buyers hits
the poorest hardest and should be reversed.

If the housing crisis is to be tackled the Government must allow local
authorities to borrow to build and accelerate building on surplus public land.

Responding to the House of Lords Economic Committee’s report ‘Building More Homes’, Green Party Housing Spokesperson Samir Jeraj said:

Many of the committee’s recommendations - on breaking the monopoly on developers, enabling council house building, and the misguided nature of the government’s focus on home ownership - reflect long-held Green Party positions.

However, they do not go far enough in some areas, particularly on Right to Buy. This damaging policy has rightly been scrapped in Scotland, and is on the way to being scrapped in Wales - it must be abandoned in England too.

To make council tax genuinely fair, it should be replaced by a Land Value tax, which would return to the community the value added to a property because of improvements that have been paid for by the public purse.

Tackling the housing crisis must be at the top of the new Prime Minister’s priorities, and taking on this report’s recommendations would be a positive first step.

The following appeal, published on the Kilburn Unemployed Workers Group's 'Kwug blog' may appeal to some of your readers who can help financially. The Kwug Blog editor is of limited means financially, but finds co-operating with Taxpayers Against Poverty to be uniting in common cause: Please help fund Taxpayers Against Poverty to inform democracy more effectively. Revd Paul Nicolson works tirelessly at 84, and is concerned for the future.

Top Blogs

SEARCH WEMBLEY MATTERS

Brent Community Organisations

GET THE CLEANER BRENT APP

CONTACT YOUR LOCAL COUNCILLOR

RECEIVE NOTIFICATIONS OF WEMBLEY MATTERS POSTINGS BY EMAIL

Total Pageviews

Comments and Guest blogs

The posts on this blog reflect my interests locally, nationally and internationally as an eco socialist.

COMMENTS

Comments are approved unless abusive, obscene, completely off the subject (or off the wall), disguised advertising or libellous. As I want to encourage debate publication of a comment does not imply that I agree with it.GUEST BLOGS

Contact me at martinrfrancis@virginmedia.com if you wish to submit a Guest Blog.

Follow by Email

Follow Wembley Matters on Twitter

As well as the main blog you can get news and updates on Twitter from Wembley Matters
Follow @WembleyMatters